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Wow 2017, you have come and gone in a New York Minute. How did that happen? I didn’t even get a chance to get one blog post out in 2017. I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, however, getting back to blogging is something I am hoping to do in 2018.

I may not have done any blogging, but that doesn’t mean I was lazing about on my couch all year. I was fortunate to have quite a few amazing adventures last year, and even added 6 new country stamps to my passport.

A couple of years ago, I did a blog post about where I traveled each month. I thought it was a fun way to look back remember the past year, so I have decided to do the same for 2017. Here we go:

January 2017
My first work trip of the year was to Dubai, UAE. As I had never been before, I was quite excited for this visit. I did manage to sneak in a bit of sight-seeing after my work meetings. I visited the souks in old town Dubai, took an Abra (boat) ride (in the rain), saw the famous fountains at Dubai Mall, went to the top of Burj Khalifa and made a quick stop at Jumeirah Beach to photograph the Burj al Arab from the outside.

Dubai seemed a bit over-the-top to me (ok, way over) but I am glad I saw it. It is a very safe and squeaky clean place (I even saw a guy polishing the door knobs at my hotel) but seems to be lacking in more “traditional” Arab culture.

It seems the holiday season is upon us and since I am looking forward to spending a few days in my favorite park over the holidays, I was thinking it might be fun to change-up one of the old classic Christmas tunes to a wilder theme this year.

C’mon sing along now, you know you want to…

One the first day of Christmas my Kruger gave to me, a leopard in a tree.

Those of you who have been following along on this blog for some time already know that I am totally addicted to the Kruger National Park. In the past few months, I have been fortunate to take 2 more solo trips back to the park of 2 weeks each. As you might imagine, I am drowning in photos from these trips but today I want to tell you about the highlight of my latest adventures, the SANParks Honorary Rangers Photography Course.

There is a tale I have been wanting to tell about my last trip to Kruger Park back in November, but first I had to sort through over 600 photos of this one sighting alone. I have been very fortunate in my trips to Kruger to have had some amazing experiences, and at the tail end of this past trip, there was one more very special sighting waiting for me.

Let me set the mood. It was my last full day in the park. My usual M.O. on this trip had been to get up and out around 4:30 am when the camp gates opened. This day was however, dark and rainy and I decided to go back to bed for a bit and wait out the rain. Unfortunately I soon discovered that it was also starting to rain INSIDE my hut as well. I moved my stuff out of the path of destruction and went to wait for the reception to open to get some assistance.

Luckily there was an empty hut and I proceed to move all of my belongings over to my new hut for my final night. By the time I got out of camp, it was after 8:30 and finally the rain was starting to let up. I opted for an easy drive from Lower Sabie over to Skukuza on the main road, with plans to take the gravel roads back if they started to dry up by the afternoon.

Back in January, we returned to one of my favorite little parks for a weekend getaway. Marakele National Park is located in the Waterberg Mountains, north of Gauteng in the Limpopo Province. It is about a 2.5 hour drive from the Joburg northern suburbs, perfect for a quick weekend away in the bush. Strangely enough, it seems this park is relatively undiscovered by Joburgers as many of our friends and coworkers have never even heard of it. This is actually one of the pluses; I have never seen this park crowded so if you are looking to avoid the masses, come here.